Why Suns face tougher road back from playoff loss than Bucks

By Ric Bucher
FOX Sports NBA Writer

Minutes after the Phoenix Suns had their return ticket to the NBA Finals revoked by Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks — actually hours after, given that the outcome was decided by halftime — Suns point guard Chris Paul spoke as if their trip hadn’t been canceled but merely delayed.

"We’ll be right back next year, I’ll tell you that much," he said defiantly after the Suns’ soul-crushing 123-90 loss in Game 7 on their home floor ended the Western Conference semifinals.

A sampling of GMs, scouts and coaches I spoke to or texted with in the past 24 hours aren’t so sure. Asked which former conference champion faces the bigger challenge to return to the Finals next season, the Suns or Milwaukee Bucks, who were also tossed out of the playoffs Sunday with a decisive Game 7 loss to the Boston Celtics, the response was nearly unanimous: Chris Paul’s squad. 

And Chris Paul was a near unanimous choice as a primary reason.

For the better part of this season, there was talk about how impressive Paul played at the ripe old age of 37, leading the league in assists and the Suns to the league’s best record (64-18). The plaudits continued through the first round, as the Suns put down the pesky and youthful New Orleans Pelicans behind Paul’s efficient 22 points and 11 assists per night.

Then came the battle against the Mavs and their budding superstar point guard, Luka Dončić, who proved to be a lot harder for Paul to outperform than the Pels’ CJ McCollum. After a promising start — 19 and 28 points in a pair of Phoenix wins — Paul had easily the worst five-game stretch of his 14 postseason visits, or 142 playoff games in all. In the last five games of the series, he had as many turnovers as field goals (18), shot a total of three free throws, had one game in which he had more fouls (6) than points (5) and had another game in which he had more turnovers (5) than assists (4).

If Dončić — 14 years younger, 7 inches taller, 55 pounds heavier and every bit the offensive maestro as Paul — could be credited solely for Paul’s struggles, they might’ve been more acceptable. But the Mavs’ backup point guard and Paul’s physical doppelgänger, Jalen Brunson, was nearly as effective.

"Initially, I wanted to say Milwaukee has the tougher road," an Eastern Conference assistant coach said, "but there are so many more questions about the Suns. Did CP3 have a bad series because he’s old or because they exposed him when he has to work really hard? Chris gets [favorable] calls [from the officials] during the regular season, and he just didn’t get those in this series. Those unknowns about Chris — and then where they are with DeAndre — makes me have to go with Phoenix."

That’s DeAndre as in DeAndre Ayton, the Suns’ starting center and a restricted free agent this summer. Ayton hoped to sign a long-term contract with Phoenix before the season, but reports were that the team balked at giving him the maximum-salary deal he wanted. Unfazed, Ayton produced arguably the most efficient performance of his four-year career, shooting and scoring at a career-high clip (63.4%, 17.4 PPG) despite averaging a career-low 29.5 minutes.

But in the Game 7 thrashing by the Mavericks, Ayton played only 17 minutes and at one point had a bitter exchange with head coach Monty Williams on the sideline in which, a league source said, Williams shouted at Ayton, "You cost us!" What that referred to was not clear. 

There were also rumblings that Ayton and assistant coach Mark Bryant had a disagreement before the game. All of which raises questions about how aggressive Ayton will be in finding an offer sheet from an opposing team and how eager the Suns will be to exercise their right to match it and retain Ayton’s services.

Paul’s poor showing and Ayton’s uncertain future aren’t the only questions Phoenix faces. There’s also the flat-lining of shooting guard Devin Booker, projected to be a franchise cornerstone to compensate for Paul's age-driven decline. Booker and Paul were the first two reasons a Western Conference scout picked the Suns "by far" to face a bigger challenge next season than the Bucks.

"CP3 will be older and no longer the alpha," he said. "Booker has not shown the capacity to carry the team yet. The Ayton situation is unsettled, and he is feeling unappreciated.

"After that, who can score? They need another reliable scorer or creator with legitimate size for his position. They have some solid pieces … but they are the spare parts with no turbos in the parts bin."

A second Western Conference scout echoed that view, suggesting that Booker is a complementary star in the same vein as Bucks shooting guard Khris Middleton, as opposed to their primary star, Giannis Antetokounmpo.

"Booker is a Middleton, not a Giannis," he said. "They have no franchise player, and their fringe players do not have much upside. They are who they are."

Making things even tougher for the Suns, the NBA personnel sampled anticipate a fiercer and deeper dogfight for supremacy in the league next year. And unlike this year, when the battle for top seeding was more intense in the Eastern Conference, the consensus is that the Suns are going to have far more competition for the best record in the West next season.

The Eastern Conference could certainly be super competitive again as well. The assistant coach pointed to the Brooklyn Nets, with a healthy Ben Simmons and Joe Harris to go alongside Kevin Durant, Seth Curry and a presumably re-signed and available Kyrie Irving, as being as potentially formidable for the Bucks as the Celtics proved to be. But he also noted that the Bucks were their own worst enemy in the East semis, daring Boston to beat them by shooting open 3s and never making an adjustment even after the Celtics proved they could.

"Next year is going to be nuts," one Western Conference GM said. "I think 10 or 11 teams could be title contenders."

It's not that far-fetched. If the Nuggets, Lakers, Nets and Clippers all get back the stars who missed most or all of this season, those teams could easily join this year's top teams fighting for a top postseason seed.

The Suns should still be one of them. If Paul can make a course correction on his postseason nosedive. If the Suns can make a course correction on their relationship with Ayton. And if Booker can evolve into as much of a floor leader and game winner as he is a shot-maker.

Maybe Paul’s defiant confidence about the Suns being "right back next year" isn’t that far off. But even if he is right on, being back won’t be enough. The Suns have to be better.

Ric Bucher is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. He previously wrote for Bleacher Report, ESPN The Magazine and The Washington Post and has written two books, "Rebound," the story of NBA forward Brian Grant’s battle with young onset Parkinson’s, and "Yao: A Life In Two Worlds," the story of NBA center Yao Ming. He also has a daily podcast, "On The Ball with Ric Bucher." Follow him on Twitter @RicBucher.